Commonly, fencing wire is attached to fence posts by ‘U’ shaped staples that are hammered over the wire. This job is both time and labour intensive due to the difficulty of ensuring that the wire is attached so that it is level on different posts.
Furthermore, when the fencing wire is attached to battens often two people are needed—one to hold the batten and one to hammer the staples.
Additionally, this technique is undesirable when used with electrical fencing, which is now common in a number of industries, particularly in farming for controlling the movement of livestock.
Insulator fencing elements are now common for supporting electrical fencing wire. These are used as a contact point to prevent losses in electrical potential from the wire attachment point, and to protect the fence post from the wire.
However, previous insulator elements have limitations. They can be difficult to install—most are configured to be attached to a fence by a user with an additional fastening means such as a screw, nail or staple. For example see United States Design Application 102011120846. This also does not address the issue of ensuring that the wire is attached so that it is level on different posts—as the insulator must be installed by the user themselves.
Furthermore, the use of additional fastening means to secure the insulator elements to a fence post means that holes will need to be formed in the fence post for the additional fastening means. This may weaken the post, which can eventually result in a section of the fence collapsing. Additional fastening means often make it difficult to remove the insulator element from the fence post. Many insulator elements need to be removed from the fencepost in order to release the wire—this requires the additional fastening means to be removed and can result in damage to the insulator elements.
Other insulator elements may hold the wire in a loop. This means that the wire cannot be removed from the insulator element unless it is pulled from one side so that a free end of the wire is pulled through the loop. This requires the wire to be pulled through all the insulator elements on the fence posts preceding the post of interest. This can be a problem if a user needs to remove a wire from a single or a few fence posts—they will instead have to remove the wire from a far larger number of fence posts, which is labour and time intensive. For an example of such an insulator element see United States Patent Application No. 20130313001.
The wire holding portion of known insulator elements can also be problematic. For example, some insulator elements may allow the wire to slip from the wire holding portion. On the other hand, insulator elements that hold the wire securely can be cumbersome and difficult to insert the wire into.
It is the object of the present invention to address the foregoing problems or at least to provide the public with a useful choice.
All references, including any patents or patent applications cited in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference. No admission is made that any reference constitutes prior art. The discussion of the references states what their authors assert, and the applicants reserve the right to challenge the accuracy and pertinency of the cited documents. It will be clearly understood that, although a number of prior art publications are referred to herein, this reference does not constitute an admission that any of these documents form part of the common general knowledge in the art, in New Zealand or in any other country.
Throughout this specification, the word comprise”, or variations thereof such as “comprises” or “comprising”, will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated element, integer or step, or group of elements integers or steps, but not the exclusion of any other element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps.
It is an object of the present invention to address the foregoing problems or at least to provide the public with a useful choice.
Further aspects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the ensuing description which is given by way of example only.